This invention relates generally to the field of electronically-scanned phased array antennas. More specifically, the present invention relates to electronic beamformers for such antennas.
Phased array antennas have been developed to provide electronic beam steering of radiated or received electromagnetic signals. In traditional phased arrays, the signal applied to all radiating elements is identical. An amplifier is often placed near the radiating element to provide gain and to provide amplitude control for weighting to control sidelobe levels. A phase shifter is placed near the radiating element for beam steering. It is well known in the art that a linear phase shift applied across the radiating elements will cause the mainbeam of the antenna pattern to scan in varying degrees of angle from the boresight or axis of the array.
Frequency scanned arrays achieve similar off-axis mainbeam steering by varying the frequency of the radiated signal as a function of time.
Adaptive nulling was developed to control interference in the sidelobes of the antenna pattern. In this application, a constraint is placed on the amplitude and phase of each element such that the amplitude of the antenna pattern is small in the direction of an interfering signal, thereby attenuating the level of the interfering signal in the sidelobes relative to the amplitude of the desired signal in the mainbeam.
Space-time adaptive processing was developed to provide additional control of signals upon reception, downstream of the antenna.
Synthetic aperture radar was developed to produce long virtual apertures, thereby producing long dwell times and fine resolution of ground objects. In SAR, a small physical aperture is translated in space by the motion of the host platform. As the physical aperture is moved, the signals transmitted and received by the aperture are phase-shifted and added to produce a resultant sum that is similar to that of a larger physical aperture with many elements or subarrays. The virtual aperture is N times larger than the physical aperture, where N is the number of signals integrated, and results in a corresponding improvement in spatial resolution on the ground.
A limitation of the prior art is that, for any instant of time, beam steering is fixed in angle for all ranges. In the current state of the relevant art, multiple antennas or a multiple-beam antenna is required to direct radiated energy to different directions at various ranges.
In some applications, antenna patterns which focus in different directions with range would be very desirable. Such a mechanism would provide more flexible beam scan options, such as multiple transmit beams without spoiling the transmit pattern. Range dependent beamforming would also reduce interference arriving from fixed directions such as multipath.